Thoughts, comments and observations about the Chicago White Sox from the Communications Department.

Results tagged ‘ Camelback Ranch ’

Here are the highlights from today’s first Sox intrasquad game at Camelback Ranch: Team 1 (major league starters) nipped Team 2 (mostly minor leaguers), 4-3, in a 5 1/2 inning contest. Team 1 was paced by Brent Morel (double, RBI, run scored) and Blake Tekotte (triple, RBI). Simon Castro gave up a lone run in two innings of work. Josh Bell (single, RBI) and Jared Mitchell (RBI, HBP) collected RBIs for Team 2, while Leyson Septimo pitched one scoreless inning. Here was the scene at today’s game:

Assistant GM Buddy Bell Reviews Sox Prospects

On 2012 No. 1 draft pick Courtney Hawkins: “One of the reasons we sent Courtney up to (Class A) Kannapolis is that we wanted to get him in an environment that was faster than (Advanced Rookie) Bristol. The (high Class A) Winston-Salem thing tricked us because he did so well. As it turns out, no matter what level we sent him to he actually kept getting better and better and that’s a testament to how talented he is. It also showed us the kind of makeup he has and that he’s a tough kid who gets better as the lights get brighter, which is great for moving up the ladder and eventually getting to Chicago. We’d like to get him to Double A (Birmingham) by the end of the year. In saying that, if he doesn’t get to Double-A it’s not that big of a deal.”

On 2009 No. 1 pick Jared Mitchell:“As (last) season went on, he got healthier…He, for me, probably looks better than anybody in camp right now in terms of body and progress. We had him in the instructional league last year for about 10 days and he kind of tweaked his hitting approach a little bit. His balance is really good right now and I’m really anxious to see what he does in a game. He’s probably one of our top five guys in the organization when it comes to competing. This kid competes like crazy, right now he’s as impressive as anyone we have in camp. He’ll start the season at (AAA) Charlotte.”

On who is the one prospect to have the kind of year Carlos Sanchez had in 2012: ” (Infielder) Joey DeMichele. “We drafted him out of Arizona State and he’s a really interesting guy. We’d like to think of him kind of like (Jason) Kipnis of Cleveland, because he can run a little bit, has some pop in his bat and is a high-energy kid…We’re kind of on the fence whether he starts at (A) Winston-Salem or (AA) Birmingham. We’re also looking for (Tyler) Saladino to have a (good) year as well. He’ll start at Birmingham.”

On promising prospect Trayce Thompson: “He’s going to start in (AA) Birmingham. We expect really good things from him. He’s another guy who looks really good, he’s always had a terrific body but he’s starting to get his man strength in his shoulders and legs. Obviously, he’s had two really good years and we want to be careful with him because kids with power, they seem to come a little later, especially outfielders.”

Dan Plesac and Ken Rosenthal from the MLB Network are onsite today as part of the net’s tour through team spring training sites. Check out the coverage tonight on MLBN.

Jake Peavy, the Padres’ Chase Headley, the Reds’ Brandon Phillips and the Dodgers’ Andre Ethier took part in a photo shoot for GQ Magazine last night at the Camelback Ranch – Glendale ballpark. The photo spread is scheduled to run in the May issue of GQ. “At least I wasn’t alone,” Peavy joked this morning. I told him it would be a little tough in May to run all around the state of Alabama buying all the copies of GQ … then again, maybe not!

Chris Sale Q&A Conference Call With Sox Fans, Part II (First Part Appeared in Wednesday’s Post)

Would you ever want to learn how to throw a knuckleball “I don’t think I quite have an arm slot to throw a knuckleball. I’ve always messed around with it growing up. It’s funny you mention this because I play catch in the off-season with my dad who can throw a pretty good one, and he always gives me crap about it because he has a better pitch than I do. I don’t see it in my future, but if it comes down to it I wouldn’t be opposed to learning it.”

Going into next season, is there added pressure in the American League Central Division with the recent additions among teams? “I wouldn’t say it’s added pressure. I think it’s added motivation to be honest with you. It motivates us to live up to who we are and what we do. This is a team effort, but it takes a group of 25 individuals putting everything they have into one collective group. We have guys in here that put it on the line and we all play for each other. That’s the main thing and that’s what we did last year and it worked well. I don’t think we’re going to sit here and say we have more pressure on ourselves, I think we have more determination going into this year. It’s not going to get any easier from this day forward. We all know that and we expected that. We’re ready for it.”

What do you believe you or the team can do to improve upon last year’s performance? “You set out every year to be the best you can be. For myself, personally, I don’t like to set goals or a bar for myself because sometimes you don’t reach that bar and you get down on yourself and get disappointed. Also, say you reach that bar, you kind of give up. You say ‘I’ve met my goal so I can cruise in from here on out’. For me, I want to be as consistent as I possibly can and do everything I can to help the team win. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I’m going to rattle out this many wins and this is going to be my ERA, but obviously I’m going to take into account what happened last year and work on things I didn’t do so well and sharpen the things that I did do well and see where it takes me.”

Who is the toughest challenge you had in the batter’s box last season? “I have to go with Billy Butler from Kansas City. It seemed like every time I faced that team, if I gave up five runs, he had three RBIs. He, for the most part last year, owned me. I’m very disappointed to say that. He’s just a good hitter and he hits the fast ball well, and it seemed like he had a little bit better eye than he had in the past. He took me deep a few times last year and in previous years. He seems to be the one guy that gives me the most trouble at the plate.”

As White Sox fans, are we ready to say that we have one of the best starting rotations? “Well, I’m hoping you guys are saying that. We’re all definitely excited to see where this goes and how it plays out. Not only do we have an unbelievable group of guys, but we have some great talented athletes. I think getting Johnny (John Danks) back and having him healthy is huge. I was throwing in the cage next to him today and I’ve been throwing bullpens next to him for the last couple times and he’s looking really good. He’s very confident. You can tell he’s got that step back and is happy to be here. He’s working hard and he’s doing everything he can. That’s going to be fun to see. As a group, we’re all excited. We all pull for each other and we push each other; we have friendly rivalries. We all sit down and talk about pitching. We might be good on paper, but we’re a tight knit group as well, both in the clubhouse and off the field. We’re all pulling for each other and that’s the best part. We don’t get jealous. We’re all rooting for each other and have each other’s back. There’s an open line of communication between us and we’re bouncing ideas off of each other. I hope you’re as excited as we are because we’re thrilled to get this year started.”

Do you know when your first live appearance will be on the mound in Spring Training? “Our first game is coming up on Saturday, but I’m not 100 percent what day I’ll be throwing. I’m still talking with Coop about that. I don’t think I’m going to throw in February or start a game in February. We’re bouncing ideas off each other and we’ll see where it goes.”

Quote of the Day

From the Sox clubhouse: “If I tell you it’s Christmas in July, hang the stocking.”

On the very next pitch, you guessed it, Tekotte tripled to right field.

I told him to save them for when they count.

Tomorrow’s Schedule

White Sox players will go through a media session tomorrow morning with Kevin Sullivan, former White House Communications Director (and huge Sox fan, by the way).

Did You Know…

…Jeff Keppinger led his University of Georgia team to the College World Series in his junior season with a .389 BA, 18 homers and 73 RBIs? He hit .444 in the CWS, including a triple and a two-run homer off of former major leaguer Mark Prior, then pitching at USC.

Rain, wind and cold abbreviated today’s workout, but John Danks was able to throw under the covered batting cage–his third throwing session of the spring.

Cameras Rolling

Several Sox players took part in a commercial shoot today and it went without a hitch. Details will follow in the coming weeks.

Sale Answers Sox Fans’ Questions on a Variety of Subjects

Chris Sale spent part of his day today interacting with Sox fans. So much good info came out of the Q&A session that I’ll be posting in two parts. Part I is below, Part II tomorrow. Here are the first six questions and Sale’s responses:

How have you adjusted to pitching to Tyler Flowers instead of A.J. Pierzynski?“There really is no adjustment. With catchers you just kind of throw to the mitt; it just might be on a different hand. Tyler has been great and I’ve already thrown to him a couple of times out here. We’ve communicated back and forth quite a bit, whether it’s pitches, movement, what he sees I’m doing differently, stuff like that. He kind of helps me out in a coaching standpoint too because he’s looking straight at me with my mechanics and my hand and my delivery.”

How do you calm yourself during stressful moments on the mound?“When things start happening and moments start to build up and you find yourself at the peak of the game, the best thing you can do is just slow it all down. Step off, take a couple of deep breaths, and flush any of the negativity out that could possibly happen instead of going into that situation saying, ‘I hope I don’t get hit, or I hope this, or I don’t want this to happen.’ You kind of talk yourself into ‘Hey I’m going to make this pitch; I’m going to get out of this.’ You have to self-motivate, but at the same time don’t hype yourself up too much because this game can get fast on you in a hurry and can unravel pretty quickly. The more you can slow it down and pace yourself the better off you are.”

How has the arm held up after throwing so many innings last year? “So far, so good. I actually took a little more time off this off-season from throwing. I probably took an extra three weeks to a month off from throwing, moreso than I usually do, because I wanted to give it a rest. Last year was a long year and obviously that was the most innings I’ve ever thrown. There at the end I might have fizzled out a little bit because I had been throwing a lot and was still learning how to get back out there every fifth day. Now that I’ve gone through that and know how I’ve felt the beginning, middle, and end and all the way in between I can kind of adjust accordingly. This year, I can help myself, not really beat what I did last year, but get through the year a little bit more complete than I did last year.”

How did you gain the weight this off-season? By eating a lot of pizza?“Obviously I ate my fair share of pizzas; I won’t sit here and lie to you. The biggest thing for me this off-season is I got a trainer and saw him five days a week. He got me in a program that helped me build leg strength, core strength, etc. I actually just started eating better, eating a bit healthier too. I learned how to grill this off-season, so I was whipping up steaks, pork chops, chicken and ribs. I feel like eating those types of things is better than going to McDonalds and grabbing two Big Macs and a large fry.”

How is the team chemistry so far compared to last year?“Honestly, it’s about the same. We have pretty much the same core group of guys back, and the guys we’ve brought in have meshed awesome. It’s the same feel, same vibe from last year. We’re laid back, everyone is friends with each other and we all have a good time. We all hang out together while we’re here, and then we’ll leave and go grab lunch or hang out at one of our houses. We’re a bunch of grown up men who are friends and play baseball and hang out off the field too so that’s the good thing about what we have going here. I can truly say every day I come in I have a good time and enjoy the people that I work with. Not everyone in the world can say that, but it’s nice to have that here.”

What are your thoughts on Peavy saying you should pitch on opening day?“Everyone knows what my standpoint on that is. It would be a tremendous honor to me and that’s obviously something you dream about. I would appreciate it more than anything, but where I’m sitting I feel like that’s (Jake Peavy’s) role. He’s not only a leader on our pitching staff, but a leader of our team. With what he’s gone through and what he’s done and how he’s gone about his business throughout his career it’s hard to sit here and say I think I deserve to pitch over someone I look up to. It’s kind of like saying you’re the man of the house when you’re still living in the house with your dad. I have all the respect in the world for him and that’s why I truly believe he’s our leader to go out there, but it makes me feel a lot more confident to hear him say those things about me.”

Quote of the Day

From former Sox slugger Ron Kittle, weighing in from Mexico: “I found a lone Mayan Sox fan at the ruins of Chichen Itza at Mayan Temple.”

Tomorrow’s Schedule

The Sox will play an intrasquad game tomorrow morning.

Did You Know…

…that popular White Sox head athletic trainer Herm Schneider, entering his 35th season with the Sox, was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands?

Photo of the Day

The weather was inclement today at Camelback Ranch (top), but look what was happening in Tucson, the Sox’s former spring training home (photo courtesy of a tweet from pro golfer and Northwestern product Luke Donald).

Today was Photo Day at White Sox camp, the one day each spring when photographers from Major League Baseball, the team and all the various licensees (think baseball cards, products, etc.) snap early morning photos of our staff and players.

Setup begins the day before and folks, including many from my staff, arrive veeeerrry early in the morning. We have an early-to-rise camp, so while we say Photo Day starts at 7:00 a.m., guys started going through our line closer to 6:20 a.m. By 8:40 a.m., the dust had settled.

Here is an image from the day …

MJ

While we maybe had 8-10 different stations today, you can imagine what Photo Day was like when Michael Jordan was in camp, something like 40 stops by my recollection. And Jordan’s response to photographers was always classic: “If I only get two free throws, then you only get two shots too.” And after two clicks of the camera, he moved on …

Robin on Matt Thornton Being Slowed Down by Elbow Soreness

“He just said it (the elbow) didn’t feel right. We have so much time down here, I think it’s safer to slow him down and get him out of drills and make sure he’s comfortable with it before he continues on…You’re concerned every time a guy has that. I don’t know what level it’s at right now. Again, the beauty of being down here so early is you can give him this time off and he can catch back up if there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Tomorrow’s Schedule

Rain, wind and cold weather predicted for Glendale.

Did You Know…

…that Sox reliever Donnie Veal is a cousin of former NBA All-Star and current Sacramento, CA mayor, Kevin Johnson?

Photo of the Day

The Sodfather: Only with the White Sox would our world famous groundskeeper Roger Bossard sneak into line on Photo Day with his trusty rake. I told him he needed a new pullover.

Paul Konerko met with the media today as the full Sox squad reported to camp for the first time. He talked about a variety of subjects.

On the prospect of this being his last season: “Nowadays in your 30s in the major leagues, let alone mid-30s or late-30s, it’s always on the table that your last year could be coming just because everything is going so much younger. The rosters show that and I’m aware of that, but it’s something that will be talked about after the season.”

On if the high expectations he has for himself will factor into the decision: “Probably yeah, that’s part of it. There are so many moving parts to it. It’s not just about performance on one level or the other. Poor performance is definitely one way to get yourself out of this game, because someone might not invite you back. Doing well also doesn’t mean you’re going to keep playing even if someone wants you to play. You’re dealing with families, your own mind, what you want to do. There’s a lot of different things to it, different variables and trying to predict where all those variables are going to be 10 months from now, nine months from now, whatever it is, it’s impossible to do. One affects the other, that one affects another and it’s tough to project. The main thing is and it’s hard to do, especially when people are going to be asking abot it, is to break it down as simple as I can and that’s the day in front of me. Today is the first day coming here and it’s about getting the kinks out, get sore and move on to tomorrow and do that as the season goes the best I can.”

On being the only remaining member of the 2005 World Series champions on the Sox roster:“Not too many (thoughts) because its been a gradual thing over the last handful of years where guys are moving on. I think it’s pretty normal, you probably find a lot of turnover in a five, six, seven-year period. Guys get older and usually to win a World Series it takes some older guys to begin with. Guys move on so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Hopefully we can make a run here and challenge for for another one before I’m done playing here, but I don’t really think about it too much unless someone brings it up to me.”

On his motivation this year to catch Frank Thomas in some statistical categories:“I got to where I’m at right now statistically as a by-product of going out and playing and trying to do it as right as I can. The numbers just kind of happen when you’re doing that, whether it’s for a week, a month, a season, or multiple seasons and it just adds up. It’s definitely not a goal that would make me play the game.”

On imagining not playing:“No question I could. I mean you have to, what’s the other option? All my tight friends who I played with coming up are all out of the game so I see what the other side is. There are pluses and minuses to that. I pick their brains on it. You have to prepare because it’s going to happen at some point as it does for every player. I’m not afraid of that, I’m not scared of it, and I just want to go as hard as I can until it happens.”

On playing for another team:“As you get older in the game, especially nowadays, you have to be more flexible if you want to continue to play. If you want that, you have to be more flexible to move around and it might be a place where you don’t want to go. Like I said in spring training two and three years ago, the whole exercise of going through the last year with the White Sox, the last year of your career and all that, I’ve already kind of done that before. This is just dusting off those feelings and those thoughts and getting back to thinking what I was thinking. Three years ago I was prepared for anything–the end of my career, the end of the White Sox, me playing for the White Sox. I was prepared for that three years ago so to do that again, to re-up, is not that big of deal the way I see it.”

On being the “old man” in the clubhouse:“I don’t feel like it, but I’m told I am.”

While the sports world celebrates Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday today, Sox and Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf has a compelling take on MJ’s baseball career:

Tomorrow is the last “short” day of camp as the full squad reports on Sunday when GM Rick Hahn and manager Robin Ventura will meet with the entire club and pitchers will throw BP to hitters for the first time. One of those hitters, of course, will be slugger Adam Dunn who stopped by Camelback Ranch today.

Ventura on the importance of John Danks, who had his first bullpen session of the spring yesterday: “It’s a big one. He was our Opening Day starter last year so not having him around was a big blow. (Danks) getting healthy and being able to do the things you would expect him to do are big for us.”

Tomorrow’s schedule

With tomorrow being the last day before the full squad reports, bullpen sessions and catchers BP will be the order of the day.

Did you know…

...that Gordon Beckham’s father was a quarterback at the University of South Carolina?

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